


Torture

by gallifreyanlibertea



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-11 22:26:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11723856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyanlibertea/pseuds/gallifreyanlibertea
Summary: Alfred's lab partner drove him crazy.





	Torture

**Author's Note:**

> A request for someone who asked for "USUK but in a Chemistry lab" and I got carried away.

Arthur Kirkland was insufferable.

That face of his, when he got an A on a test that everyone else had tanked, just  _very so slightly_  tilting the paper so Alfred could see it. The way he’d point his finger when he corrected every little mistake in Alfred’s lab report- “Capitalize that ‘OH’ in NaOH. Don’t capitalize the ‘p’ in pH. Your data table is crooked. Why don’t you dot your I’s?”

A gremlin. Someone that sucked the energy right out of Alfred, constantly complaining, constantly bickering with anyone that tried to help him, constantly whining about this and that and  _this and that._

 _Oh,_  the way he’d hold the door, and you’d think it was so polite. With his please’s and thank you’s, but with that self-satisfied smirk plastered on his chalky-pale face, like he’d done you some sort of favor. So immature, despite the act he’d put on with his big ol’ brows perched high on his forehead, arms crossed, like he was some sort of classy adult who  _definitely_  didn’t blow his top when Alfred dug his nail into a pencil borrowed from him, or, rarely, found something to correct in  _his_  work.

He was a dick. Everyone knew it, Alfred Jones knew it, he sat next to it in Chemistry, but damn it, he could yell and shout and tear at his hair, and it was insane just how much he’d pay to shut Arthur up sometimes, but it was when the dude smiled.

It was when he would read something funny, or something sweet, memorable, something that would make him huff out a smile while thumbing through a novel when he should’ve been taking notes in class. It was then that Alfred’s heartbeat hammered in his ears, butterflies fluttered in his lungs, and nothing else would matter- not the date of their next test, not the answers to yesterday’s homework, nothing but the curve of those soft lips and Alfred hated it.

Oh god, he hated every second of liking Arthur Kirkland.

“You should start wearing contacts on lab days.”

Alfred suppressed a roll of his eyes, taking the goggles that were offered to him as Arthur swept his bangs over the rims of his own. “I can see fine without my glasses, Arthur.”

“If you could, why would you have glasses?”

Alfred wanted to strangle him. He wanted his hands around that neck, he wanted to squeeze, he wanted to grab that smug face and kiss those lips raw and it was torture.

“I can see fine enough to not be a lab error.”

“I’d better conduct the titration anyway,” Arthur remarked and he rolled up the sleeves of that green sweater of his, glancing at Alfred expectantly, as he did, like Alfred was supposed to have read his mind and done what he was told. “Go prepare the buret. I can’t do everything, now can I?”

Alfred bit back a growl and Arthur definitely noticed that. He seemed smug about it. He smirked, turning back to scrawl in his lab notebook, and Alfred just wanted to bite something, break something, because that shouldn’t have been attractive.

No.

It shouldn’t have, because Arthur was a grade-A asshole. He was annoying, he was insensitive, an alien, and Alfred had no idea why he couldn’t just leave it at that. He had no idea when he’d began to daydream of a white-picket family with him, of kissing him soft and chaste in a fragrant expanse of meadow, and other sappy, frankly uncharacteristic things that made no sense for him to be thinking about.

Arthur took the prepared buret pipe from Alfred’s hands and screwed it into its holder, and Alfred watched as he set up the experiment, with that big brain of his, those smarts that drove Alfred insane trying to match but set afire a sort of admiration in the pit of his stomach. It was hot and cold, right and wrong, wanting to beat Arthur in everything he did, yet wanting to just- damn, he just wanted Arthur to call him “love” in that accent of his.

“You should be collecting the pH data, Alfred, that’s what the meter’s for. I haven’t got four arms, have I?”

Alfred grit his teeth. “Yeah, yeah.”

“By the way, I’m looking to find book sources for our conclusion and I’ll need help this weekend at the library.”

There he went again, doing things that no one asked for when all their teacher would ever expect was Wikipedia cited in APA format. There he went, asking him on an outing Arthur would likely spend pointing out Alfred’s every flaw. He rolled his eyes this time, dipping the pH meter into the beaker. “Sorry, that dance is this weekend and I’m going with a few friends.”

“Like you would come if there wasn’t a dance.” Arthur snorted and Alfred set his jaw. “Not many people like to spend their weekends devoted to studies.”

“Just ‘cause you have nothing better to do in your free time-”

Arthur paused and Alfred thought he’d finally got to him. He’d finally pushed past that tough exterior into the small, vulnerable Arthur that Alfred had likely fallen for. The way he behaved around people who had never done any wrong, innocent children the one time they had been forced to go read to elementary schoolers for volunteer points. Perhaps it was then Alfred had seen something that had him so invested in that green-eyed boy, something he saw right now, and every other time he’d managed to chip at that act of his.

Alfred had asked him one day how his morning had been. There it was, that wide-eyed look, that stammered response, and Alfred had laughed, readying up with more pleasantries before Arthur had shut him out.

He’d told Arthur just two days ago that he’d envied that loopy, beautiful handwriting of his and Arthur had smiled a bit- just a bit, but then, “You  _should_  envy it because your handwriting looks like a seismograph.”

And today was yet another one of those days. Arthur straightened back up with a small, set scowl. “It’s not my fault no-one asks me to those things.”

Alfred bit his lip, dipping the meter back into the mixture after Arthur had let a significant amount of acid drip into the beaker. He watched Arthur suck in a sharp, yet almost inaudible, inhale at the slight graze of Alfred’s hand against his.

“Y- you- ugh, you nearly knocked the beaker over!”

Hardly. But Alfred sighed, finding it to be rather hard to be mad at Arthur because  _no-one asked him to those things._  Of course, it wasn’t new information. Not many people liked Arthur and Alfred knew it, but to have it come from the lips of someone he thought was oblivious to it, someone he thought laughed over the prospect like some sort of Disney villain- it was surreal to find that Arthur was just as easily affected by it.

Alfred tapped Arthur on the shoulder and the boy practically seized, cheeks tinting red as he tossed a lethal look in Alfred’s direction. “What?”

“You could…” It was something of a leap. “Um, this weekend,  _we_  could-”

It was no secret Alfred was pansexual, and Arthur was definitely gay, so there were no assumptions made. Well, perhaps the one that Arthur would want anything to do with him- that he would go to any social outing with his lab partner from second period, someone he didn’t even feel comfortable smiling around.

“We definitely could-”

“If you’re going to pity-ask me to the dance, then no thanks, I’m fine.”

Alfred set the meter down. Plan B. “Actually, I was going to skip the dance.”

And for the first time in a long time, Arthur stopped working. He paused, stuck on an inhale, eyes blinking down at the beaker, “What?”

“For that library-thing. I figured grades are more worth it in the long run.”

Arthur bit back a blooming smile, one that he’d caught too late, because it had already manifested itself in a rare spread of those lips, freckled nose crinkling ever-so-slightly, cheeks flushed  _ever-so-slightly_. “You? The star athlete?”

“Who knows, it could be fun!”

“Then I guess I was wrong about you.”

“There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me,” Alfred replied with a cheeky grin and perhaps this would be the beginning of something new.

It was hardly ever that a hopeless, baseless, mindless crush became something more- at least in Alfred’s eyes, because he’d never been one to pursue things. The natural order, the path least followed, the one where the boy next door, the one with the cute smile, would gravitate to him rather than Alfred making the first move, and perhaps this was that.

Hell, it better be. Giving up a school dance for the library? Even if it was spent with a guy like Arthur who made Alfred feel like the things  _he told his parents he would never smoke, and it wasn’t a lie because it was only one time._

“There’s one thing I do know,” Arthur said and Alfred raised a brow.

“Yeah?”

“You’ve contaminated the meter resting the tip against the table like that.” Arthur was scowling again and Alfred huffed out a whine, burying his face in his palms.

“I thought we just had a moment here.”

“Go get a wipe, idiot.”

And Alfred stomped away, unaware of the dusting of pink across Arthur’s cheeks, the slight smile playing on those lips behind Alfred’s back.  


End file.
